Fanfare Reviews
from September/October 1999
HAGEN Night, Again. Concerto for Flügelhorn and Wind Ensemble1. Sennets, Cortege, and Tuckets. Concerto for Cello and Wind Ensemble2 • Michael Haithcock, cond; Baylor University Wind Ens; Vern Sielert (flügelhom)1; Robert La Rue (vc)2 • ARSIS CD 112 (58:00)
Daron Hagen studied with some big guns--Rorem, Schwantner, and Diamond among them--and his own music, at least as represented here, is big and shiny like the big, shiny music of his teachers. Notwithstanding the technical and structural gambits explicated in the booklet notes to this CD, Hagen's style seems to be rooted in jazz and the American neo-Romantic: highly crafted, instrumentally colorful, basically tonal, and very listenable.
Of the four pieces here, only Sennets, Cortege and Tuckets (1989) began life scored for wind ensemble. Percussion is also included, lots of drums and mallet instruments adding to the somewhat martial festivities. The piece runs about nine minutes, set in a three-part form, a sustained middle section with chorale between the martial but dancelike outer passages.
Night, Again (1997) evolved out of material from Hagen's opera Shining Brow (1990). It was originally called Built Up Dark for solo piano, later orchestrated and revised under the same title for a brassless orchestra. When Hagen rescored the piece for wind ensemble with percussion he also changed the name. Hagen engages in some fairly complicated polytonal harmonic procedures, but while his melodies aren't always tonally contoured, a liking for small melodic intervals and quasitonal cadences join a mid-century conservatism with the very American rhythmic vitality that runs through all of these pieces.
Concerto for Flügelhom and Wind Ensemble (1994) takes its impetus from what might be called ready-made styles, with its three movements titled "precise funk," "slow swing," and "driving bop." "Precise funk" is Hagen taking a cue and a musical riff from Michael Torke; "slow swing" draws from the smoky music of classic movies; "driving bop" doesn't sound like bop, inevitably lacking the edge of its improvised namesake.
Concerto for Cello and Wind Ensemble (1997) was also recast from different instrumentation for this wind-ensemble recording. The piece was originally written for the present soloist, Robert La Rue. At nearly 24 minutes in three movements, it's the longest piece here. The bulk of the material follows a more introspective path, long-breathed melody with counterpoint, though the second movement returns to the rhythmic drive prevalent in the other pieces. There are some genuinely lovely passages here.
Hagen obviously has developed a fine compositional technique; all of these pieces are as well wrought as the music of his mentors. Michael Haithcock and the Baylor University Wind Ensemble, as well as the two soloists, play cleanly and straightforwardly; Robert La Rue is particularly good. What's missing, perhaps, is adventure, spontaneity, with the genteel performances doing little to draw the music out of its tendency to be a little too consistently mild.
Robert Kirzinger
Copyright © 1999 by Fanfare, Inc. Reprinted by permission from Volume 23, No. 1 (September/October 1999), pages 246-247.
HOLST 2 Suites for Band, op. 28. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Folk Song Suite. Toccata Marziale. REED La Fiesta Mexicana. MENNIN Canzona. PERSICHETTI Psalm • Frederick Fennell, cond; Eastman Wind Ens • MERCURY 289 462 960-2, mono (71:11)
These classic Holst performances are the product of a simpler time. I'm talking less about their minimalist engineering (although it's hard not to be struck by how clear a sense of acoustic space the Mercury team could create with a single microphone nearly half a century ago) than about their interpretive forthrightness, even innocence. Nowadays, Holst tends to have more shadow and chill; but in these sharply accented, up-tempo, 1955 readings, Fennell and his crackerjack wind players remind us that the music responds nearly as well to bright sunlight. Very American, I suspect, but very invigorating, too.
The generously filled disc is doubly welcome, since besides the spiffy performances of the familiar Vaughan Williams pieces that joined the Holst on the original LP, the CD includes another whole LP-worth of first-rate American band pieces too. The most overtly spectacular of them is H. Owen Reed's exuberant "folk song symphony" based on popular Mexican tunes. But I suspect that many listeners will be even more taken with the concentrated integrity of the brief works by Mennin and Persichetti. Strongly recommended.
Peter J. Rabinowitz
Copyright © 1999 by Fanfare, Inc. Reprinted by permission from Volume 23, No. 1 (September/October 1999), page 436.
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